Saturday, April 28, 2018

People hate discussing genetic consequences

The race-and-IQ debate is back. The latest round started a few weeks ago when Harvard geneticist David Reich wrote a New York Times op-ed in defense of race as a biological fact. …

I’ve watched this debate for more than a decade. It’s the same wreck, over and over.

I agree with him. It is a train wreck every time.

More broadly, much discussion of human nature is problematic. IQ is the best-studied heritable mental characteristic, but there are many others, and they drive ppl nuts. They just don't want to accept that 50+% of their personality and intelligence was written into their DNA before birth.

It also drives ppl nuts to talk about natural difference between men and women.

Race, or as Saletan prefers, ancestry and population groups, are also tied to DNA, and determined before birth.

A comment says:

I think that most of us would be happy to stop talking about race and IQ. But that needs to be part of a package deal that includes:

Stop talking about race and employment category discrepancies by race

Stop talking about race and disproportional representation in jobs where intelligence is important

Stop taliang about race and housing where housing decisions may be based on factors that correlate with intelligence

In general, stop having your cake and eating it. If you want to use race to gain special treatment, you need to prove that you are being discriminated against in the first place and that it’s not just a fair outcome due to intelligence after having received an equal opportunity.

That is also correct. The more you talk about racial and sexual egalitarianism, the more you deny human nature, then the more you lead ppl to be redpilled.

Jordan Peterson has jumped into the "Jewish Question" with an argument about race and IQ. Part of his popularity has to do with his willingness to discuss human nature with worrying too much about whom he is offending.

Saletan used to be willing to discuss human nature, but he had to become an apologist for Leftism to keep his job.

Update: Saletan is quoted, from his former life as a reporter on human nature:

“This is what happens when you deny reality. First you lose your senses, then your mind, then your soul.”